it was first reported that the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi was an unplanned uprising by a mob of people but it turns out it was a carefully orchestrated terrorist attack so why did the obama administration deliberately spread misleading information to the public and the press some truth seeking. heaven to be half true in america in which world rewash role she was floating that she should. use more fuel in the children she told them all. maybe if you try she was short of food in europe would not have taken place nearly nine hundred days after private first class bradley manning was put in jail for

allegedly sharing u.s. secrets with wiki leaks the government prepares for this high profile case to play out in court but now a group of whistleblowers is putting the entire u.s. justice system on trial we'll tell you all about it coming up. plus more proof of how some serious serious america's cyber insecurities may be in the white house has confirmed that computer hackers attempted to breach a government system and possibly one used for u.s. nuclear commands a question america's cyber readiness and a few. it's monday october first five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine when you're watching r t. we want to begin today with a look at some new information coming out about those attacks on the american consulate in benghazi libya so first let's go back and lay out just what happened it started on september eleventh nearly three weeks ago four americans including

u.s. ambassador christopher stevens was killed the following weekend u.n. ambassador susan rice made the rounds on the sunday talk shows explaining what happened our current best assessment based on the information that we have at present is that in fact with this began as was a spontaneous not a premeditated response to what had transpired in cairo in cairo as you know a few hours earlier there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated while things are changing now turns out she might have been totally wrong when in fact what had happened was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists those words from the director of national intelligence in a statement released on friday it seems they're backtracking they say also as the intelligence community collects them analyzes more information related to the attack our understanding of the event continues to evolve so as you can imagine it

didn't take long before this would turn political with several top republican lawmakers now calling for ambassador susan rice to step down. i think there's certain political overtones how else how else could you trot out our u.n. ambassador to say this was a spontaneous demonstration that at the time five days later that doesn't pass the smell test it was we that either will create willful ignorance or or abysmal intelligence this was such a failure of foreign policy message and leadership such a misstatement of facts as were known at the time and for her to go in all of those shows and to effect the i was spokesman for the world and be misinforming the american people and our allies and countries around the world. somebody has to pay the price for this so was going on here in the events surrounding this tragedy and we want to sort of get to the bottom of this to help me do that i was joined earlier by tony shaffer with the center for advanced defense studies he's also the

author of the book operation dark heart and first explained how some of these things are trickling down. well badly to begin with and frankly as you pointed out politically let's let me be very clear i was on another network talking about this the day after it happened and i said it was a terrorist event planned and all the information that i got that first day from my sources turned out to be completely true so the bottom line is this somehow the information i received from my sources who are pretty much close to what's going on was given to the white house as well so the question becomes why was the information was provided to be accurate that turns out the same information right or the white house if they had a completely different interpretation and there's more to come let me be very clear on this and this is more evidence coming out that this was not only neglect in the white house that this was indeed a very factually planned and intimate cover up as john mccain just pointed out i disagree with him

a lot as one point i agree with him was very clear that ambassador rice was rolled out to give a also a party line to the nation and that's what i was going to say i mean as this sort of started to the story sort of tired of to evolve or change. it maybe ask one of two questions should the public be more concerned that the government knew and didn't tell or that they didn't know especially considering how many intelligence officers they had on the ground tony what you said that you sort of predicted this said when your sources had told you the day on to this happened when the you know officials in libya seem to seem to be saying the same thing that you are right and yet the united states public the united states press was getting a different message what was going on here well the white house should have said it's own interest to say we don't know what happened and not give anything to say we just don't know instead they gave this complete false impression that relates to a size five story as best i can and let me be very clear on the current evidence

that the public has why the white house is still true first the f.b.i. is still trying to get to the freaking. crimes which is. aspect and necessary to result what actually look in my operations in the book operation dark heart f.b.i. can come up with you can use. they can provide your own protection secondly the media still in. this area storyboarded so this is runs parallel not that right so the bottom line is the narrative that they're putting out now everything that's going on is fundamentally flawed and i think that's why you see it when back and forth with the bottom line question if your question is yes you heard what should have been told immediately this is but one more aspect of of the politicization of national security issues which clearly should not have ever done i thought was really interesting too when you sort of break this event into its different parts just a couple days after the event happened i don't know if you heard about this or remember a c.n.n. crew actually found a journal

a personal journal written by ambassador stevens and that seemed to suggest that there was a whole lot of information coming through that he may be a target that there may be a threat there instead of sort of getting into the specifics of that or assuring the american people in some way instead of doing that what does the u.s. state department do they get angry at c.n.n. for sharing that information for doing when journalists are supposed to do you know picking up a piece of evidence left on a scene that clearly wasn't taken away so my question to you tony is is why wasn't this you know entire building this entire scene of the crime you know cleared of all the evidence. well two reasons first i think the truth has to be far more severe than we even know i'm hearing that one of the missions that the ambassador had assigned to him was that were solved by so if you outreach to a program the covert probably going to strike you i think that's what happened and as we go into this more and more they're going to be very embarrassing facts come

out i actually compare this can chap you'll recall back in two thousand and also i was able to blow up particle best. analysts regarding bad law in afghanistan i think you see something similar here secondly of course you don't want to secure a crime scene if you worry about what's going to come out regarding your own failures i think again i have a great deal of confidence that within the next two three days you're going to see more information come out showing the state department was criminally negligent and helping ambassador stevens protect himself and i think it's going to come to be known that they were essentially a coconspirator almost is demolished by the fact they did not act on his concern frankly the concerns of others which would be coming out here very short as a phony just to be clear i mean you're saying from what your sources have told you a that you know all of those in charge knew exactly that this is going to happen that's what i'm saying and the other the other part here that you mentioned that i hadn't heard anything about is that perhaps ambassador stevens next assignment

would have been to go try to communicate with talk with members of al qaida oh no he was already doing it that's my point no no i got from one of my inside. sources that part of his job there was actually to do this outreach to what sort of boat do outreach and relationship building so my friends also some of they were betting the guys they were dealing with so obviously i think this is you're going to find that the so-called global security was badly infiltrated by elements of those who are allied with al qaida and again this is more criminal negligence as far as i can tell. that's really interesting because you know i'm not an expert in this and that in these matters it whatsoever but it seems to me that when you're dealing with those kind of assignments that would be more jobs for the cia and not a united states ambassador to make it there a bastard job is to actually perform the missions assigned imber in our policy this goes back to the core of why the trying to hide all the policy there was to do

outreach to try to bring some outlier back into what they considered but mr libby of politics i think again is why you saw the failure that we did because this is a policy issue not simply scared tony i want to talk a little bit politically about this that mitt romney wrote an op ed that appeared in yesterday's wall street journal he called for a new course in the middle east and he comes down on the pressure on president obama's foreign policy saying quote i'm in this upheaval our country seems to be at the mercy of events rather than shaping them we're not moving them in a direction that protects our people or our allies tony a last question is should this attack in the way it was handled be viewed as a failure by the obama administration fundamentally the belief has been within the administration folks are talking this you out where you were doing this what they left what the right calls appeasement what the left outreach is not working by the fact that you know it's like trying to give big people a big hug hawk people but what i think what you're seeing here is

a real problem by the fact that you cannot a piece or group you can try to bring a horse to water but not make it grow you cannot give people a democracy if they have no tradition or if i think that's what he's talking about here i think that's why i call it all the white house policy a policy of wishful thinking they wish one thing but reality is america very interesting stuff as always tony shaffer with the center for advanced defense studies joining us from fairfax virginia thank you. well last week the u.s. house of representatives passed a bill aimed at beefing up protections for whistle blowers we're talking about federal workers who point out waste fraud and abuse in the government it was very similar to the version passed by the senate but did not include language offering these whistle plo blower protection for intelligence officials it wasn't a step forward but how protected really are whistleblowers in america over the weekend i attended an event held in honor of one of the most famous famous whistleblowers of this generation bradley manning. his name.

has evolved into a movement a movement with a mission the truth is the point. may be on the job may be an idealistic but things worth fighting for those who attended the event hope to eventually see accused wiki leaks or bradley manning freed from prison he's already spent eight hundred and sixty two days there much of it in solitary confinement and still has not gone to trial we are here because the truth is on trial brown that's not a traitor. he's not a spy but the truth teller and a little more former national security agency executive thomas drake is a whistleblower as well like manning charged by the government under the espionage act he revealed information to a reporter with the baltimore sun that the n.s.c. was spying on u.s. citizens he was later found innocent freedom is extraordinarily precious he was

a featured speaker along with the government accountability project director jesselyn radack manning friend and co-founder of the bradley manning support network david house duty honor and sacrifice and journalists chris hedges and others and he's. no matter what anyone feels about probably manning everyone in america i would reach for whistleblower support transparence a brother manning is an example of a young man a young soldier who was alleged to have blown the whistle so americans everywhere it had a good opinion of the young man and the point of the event to raise awareness important but also to raise money donations and book sales someone even donated a bottle of wine california white called for everything raised here will go to the bradley manning defense ever since nine eleven i've been concerned that our civil liberties are in jeopardy and it's pretty obvious that. this is where i came from massachusetts to be hearing from for the several georgetown law students and

professors attended the event many knew very little about manning beforehand i learned a lot that way more than like more knowledge and i came here with it's very important for me to be here just seen the face i mean i'll say it with a with of no way. to how but the discussion here is a discussion about a young man his future and the future of a country's laws and legacy. in washington christine for example our chief. so i did want to talk more about last night's event and also about some of the larger implications here not just who bradley manning is or what he did but what he represents and to speak more about that i was joined by jesselyn radack national security and human rights director for the government accountability project she's also one of the she's one of the speakers last night and is the author of the book traitor the whistleblower and the american taliban. i thought it went really well i don't know how much money was raised by the event it was

a fundraiser but i do know that there's a generous tuner who is willing to match dollar for dollar any contributions me made and i think there were incredibly powerful speeches by thomas drake and by chris hedges and by david house and i just liberate iraq as well thank you. i did the best i could it's very hard because he is an incredibly significant whistleblower and arguably one of the most important ones of the past century even daniel ellsberg the patriarch of whistleblowers says that about bradley manning ellsberg of course leaked the pentagon papers to maritimes and other publications let's talk about bradley manning and what's next of course this these funds are needed bradley manning has an attorney david coombs these funds are needed to continue to support him and he has been as we said you know behind bars for eight hundred fifty two hundred sixty two days i think he still has not gone to

trial what's going on here well his attorneys have actually recently filed a motion about his right to a speedy trial that he's entitled to under the sixty amendment of the u.s. constitution and also under article ten of the uniform code of military justice. that is one motion we have an upcoming hearing and article thirteen worker doing allegations about torture so there are a number of things coming up for him but again david coombs is an excellent attorney but you know the fees are running very high in these cases in my with my espionage act clients were told that their defense can cost between one million and three million dollars so even if you're found innocent you don't get that money back in your you've been put through financial hell as well as personal health for telling. true i want to sort of broaden this just talk for a moment a lot of times we talk about bradley manning we also talk about julian assange as

the co-founder of wiki leaks he has of course been holed up in the ecuadorian embassy for the last several months he's been granted asylum in ecuador but is wanted for questioning on sexual allegations in sweden so all this time julian assange has been saying feel free to come and question me here i don't want to go to sweden for a number of reasons number one because i'm worried that you know they will then send me to the united states where attorney general holder has already said there's criminal investigation going on but also and this was surprising to a lot of people he spoke out julian assange spoke out against conditions somewhat oppressive conditions for detention prisoners in sweden so i want to talk about this new example that's out we know that got freed swart home the co-founder of pirate bay is in sweden he's been refused any access to newspapers or television he's totally forbidden from having guests and he's not officially been charged so let's talk a little bit about this and how this could potentially relate to

a song which i think this case while it is completely unrelated to wiki leaks underlines all the reasons why why assad was granted asylum. basically he has a valid fear of political persecution and it also highlights all the problems with the swedish system in terms of unusual secrecy in their pretrial judicial process the ability to hold accused people incommunicado the ability to hold people without charges for a very long period of time and there's no guarantee of a public trial and it also highlights the whole extradition issue with sweden because this. was in think he was in cambodia and he. he was extradited to sweden and that is precisely the concern that julian assange has that britain will promptly extradite him to sweden which will

probably extradite him to the u.s. and both countries have specifically refused to give any guarantee that they will not do that right that would make it a whole lot easier if they if they were able to make i guarantee let's talk also a few minutes ago i was talking about the legislation congress came back for a special session. passed through pretty quickly the whistleblower protection act or a version of it and there were several aspects in there i do want to highlight a few of them basically the legislation clarifies that whistleblowers are protected for challenging the consequences of government policy decisions it establishes the explicit whistleblower protections for t.s.a. employees it makes it easier to discipline those who are responsible for illegal retaliation against the whistleblowers but just limit one thing missing from this house version of the bill that was included in the senate version of the bill is workers from the intelligence community talk a little bit about this yes well that's the gaping hole and always has been but the

gaping hole is that there is no protection for national security and intelligence whistleblowers who are arguably the ones you would most want to hear from and significantly are the ones who are currently being prosecuted under the espionage act people like bradley manning in the military the cia workers john kiriakou and jeff sterling tom drake who is an n.s.a. employee who script you ran. a stephen king. so the people who most need protection are again completely left out and while i applaud the house for doing this what really needs to happen is number one that this will go to the senate for final action where it has always been killed last time it died of the secret hold in the senate placed on it so getting. through the house is progress but we need the senate to approve it and also it would be good if the

senate would even think about doing something anything that would give a modicum of protection to people in the national security and intelligence arenas the more country yeah certainly one step forward two steps back sometimes and sometimes it seems just a director of national security and human rights for the government accountability project thanks as always thank you for everyone the holidays are right around the corner which means a whole bunch of you will be traveling so we want to tell you about an interesting piece of technology coming soon to an airport near you i'm talking about laser scanners that are capable of detecting every tiny trace of any substance on your body so this is obviously to find gunpower any gunpowder excuse me or any bomb making materials but it can also trace the level of adrenaline in your body not to mention bits of marijuana that may be in your clothes your skin even the crumbs from your cheerios that you had for breakfast this is all outlined in an article in gizmodo the company behind the technology is genius phonetics some contracted by

in-q tel to work with the department of homeland security here's how it works and fires a laser that provides what is called molecular level feedback at a distance of more than one hundred fifty feet away it's expected to be implemented at airports and border crossings across the country for now and later perhaps anywhere else traffic lights sporting events what else do you think here's the kicker though all of this information will be collected without you knowing it so we're it r t we're wondering if you think how would the info be gathered and how would it be used would it be stored if so where and for how long these are answers we don't quite have yet but you can bet we're going to keep digging. well if there was any doubt that an executive order on cyber security is right around the corner and now might be time to counter that doubt aside according to a series named and unnamed officials now more than ever extra protection is needed

to guard against hackers who want to find out our secrets and gain access to our most sensitive information especially when the perpetrators are from china according to an article in the conservative washington free beacon says hackers linked to china's government broke into the u.s. government's most sensitive computer networks reaching a system used by the white house military office for nuclear commands the article goes on to quote a white house official who said this was a spear phishing attack against an unclassified network there's more about the severity of what this is and what it could mean on a larger scale i was joined by our web producer andrew blake and i had a first breakdown exactly what spearfishing actually is. but you can do anything but it's kind of a whole lot of nothing if you ask me the story came out yesterday said that the beagle to be a washington free beacon to washington free beacon which a lot of us in the office went home what is that those notes i believe that yes yes there's a restart digger who used to work for the washington times that might actually still be employed there but so we start going through trying to find out what's

this big scare that we see today because within hours it starts you know hits huff po the a.p. puts it on the wire and then we start seeing new sources come in saying new things in the white house do confirm and say yes we were hit by a cyber attack or at least attempted to be hit by a cyber attack which sounds really scary that word itself attack it's a little aggressive a little aggro but spearfishing let's let's talk about that yeah it's not really that scary like i said it can do a lot but there was no crazy chinese scientists trying to infiltrate our internet tubes and working in vast machines typing codes trying to scare us what spearfishing is as someone goes i want to get the white house i'm going to find some of the white house and they go they'll send e-mails to anyone they can from the white house and they'll try to make these e-mails look love or they'll say oh hi i'm going to need your help to have your password i mean obviously can be a bit more complex than that but you want you want to try to trick someone into thinking that you're somebody else it's pretty much just social engineering there is no it's more hacking of the brain than actually is hacking computer used to

convince someone to let up their guard and then maybe she convince them to open some sort of corrupted p.d.f. file or some sort of other program then they can you know we should have you want into the system yeah and i would think that anyone who works for the white house whether it's you know someone in the intelligence committee or even somebody on the custodial staff and anyone with a white house e-mail i cannot imagine that they would be clicking on these links a lot of times you know when these and e-mails are sent to me i often see in my junk mail bob yeah exactly it is pretty much the same thing as like the old nigerian oil prince scam or something like that in fact someone fox picked up the story this afternoon in you know fearmonger the hell out of it instantly but actually put a quote in there with someone saying well. why did this come down to. someone open an email and that was it there was no it was a reason the hacking your warning system yeah chinese spies didn't break through like the west wing windows and start smashing stuff and putting little u.s.b. drugs inside the president's phone no you know they could of the fact that it was

you know sort of the department that's in charge of white house scheduling that knows where the president's going to be at all times this was cause for a whole lot of people to say we need cyber security legislation now and that's so funny because they've been saying that first so long and it seems like they've been continuously looking for a new excuse to convince us that that's a good idea or you're connecting some dots for years and years saying that the only reason this story came out is perhaps because it was another reason to put in sort of the arsenal of reasons i don't want to say that per se ok seems like would be a bit facetious of me just to assume things like this right however congress couldn't come up with cybersecurity bill decided the house could agree on anything the white house said it will take care of it then the white house confirmed that they drafted an executive order and the white house said that they will release an executive order and all they've needed to do is pretty much scare america thinking that a cyber security threat which is a threat is real but this may be kind of will be

a little blown up today i think are a little the world is scared we're on monday or you know i'm not scared on the scared of anything but it's monday we're all on edge and i let me read you know god from this article and say whoa this is the most sensitive office in the u.s. government a former senior u.s. intelligence official said a compromise there would cause graves to teach strategic damage to the united states yet someone just opened up an email i don't believe that for a second i'm sure there's some people at the pentagon that are pretty pissed that the parrot lee they have high clearance is this guy there's something else we have to talk about absolutely something that a lot of times is ignored. cyber security once the executive order especially is handed down to this is going to create an entire. nearly new infrastructure in this country and around the world is going to create a whole lot of business which could be good for jobs jobs jobs but there's going to be a lot of people who want these contracts all right so this is turning into something that seems to be a financial. blessing for a lot of people as well i believe is actually senator wyden or senator udall excuse

me i don't remember which one but when they were raising objections to the bill earlier this year before that was defeated the actually one of them forgot who actually said you know this is going to create a cyber intelligence complex this is going to be like the the military will war machine that we're pumping all this money in and just making all of northern virginia filthy rich it's going to be the same thing and people are just going to be calm. and like i said filthy rich off of just sharing other people's info slowly and only saying government even now i've been reading the washington post is actually covered this a little bit cybersecurity you know employees people who have this background this knowledge that have been coming in and getting jobs they've been able to sort of drive up the value of what they're worth because there's more of a demand than there is a supply for that so these people are making exorbitant amount amounts of money i see able to come into these jobs so imagine when there's this entirely new complex as you call her diligence he's actually going to colleges right now in trying to recruit hackers that will be doing their dirty work for the next generation so very

interesting with you will happen now well thanks for breaking that down a lot of technical terms that sometimes not all of us are familiar with are probably screwed something up sorry i'm sure you didn't our c.n.n. producer angie blake thanks so much thank you. well that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered and go to youtube dot com slash r t america or r t dot com slash usa and you can follow me on twitter at christine for is that . we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old to tell the truth. i confess and i am a total get a trendsetter i love rap and hip hop is a planned trip. but it was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the.